


Unspoken

by Pom_Rania



Series: Little By Little [31]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, Gen, POV Outsider, visually-impaired Ezra Bridger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 23:24:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11001177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pom_Rania/pseuds/Pom_Rania
Summary: Even though they went through something very different, she has relevant tips for Ezra about dealing with people.Starring the character from The Plush Tooka.





	Unspoken

She saw him around a few times. It was unavoidable, really; the base was only so large, so unless someone was particularly reclusive, they would probably be encountered once in a while. He hadn’t seemed interested in talking with her again, so she let him be. 

  She heard about him, of course. There wasn’t much else interesting going on at any given time, and especially when the person in question was one of the Jedi, it was going to be talked about. It didn’t feel right, but she understood why it happened. 

  She tried not to watch him too intently, looking for any signs. He was more than what had happened to or was happening with his body. They all were. 

  She knew what it felt like, at least somewhat. She should be better than the other people. She didn’t want to be part of the problem, or make the problem feel even worse than it already was.

  She hadn’t been searching for him. She found him anyways; slouched against a stack of crates, head down, scuffing the dirt with his foot. He wasn’t precisely hiding, but he was definitely in an out-of-the-way location. He wasn’t looking in her direction. 

  She didn’t have anything she needed to do at the moment. She coughed slightly; loud enough to be noticed, but not something that would sound too obvious. Hopefully. 

  He looked up, and recognition flickered across his face. His vision was still good enough for that, apparently. He flashed a weak grin. “I guess you know what it was now.”

  She briefly smiled in response. It was equally empty of any real joy. “Honestly,” she started, “I was more surprised that your name’s Ezra. It’s not that... I mean, I’d been certain it was ‘Ettar’, so anything other than that would have been a surprise, but I didn’t know what you had with.... Whatever it turned out to be, I hadn’t had any strong ideas on it, so I wasn’t expecting it but it wasn’t a surprise, and....” That was not how she had wanted to say anything. 

  She glanced over to check his reactions. He seemed more confused than offended, so it wasn’t an immediate failure. She could still make something out of the situation. 

  She took a deep breath. “That’s not important,” she said. “Sorry. There were some things I wanted to say, if I ever – talked with you again.” 

  He reacted to that, it was obvious. The lines of his body tensed up, and he seemed more closed-off, although she wouldn’t be able to describe how. 

  “You’ve probably had people tell you all sorts of things, that they’re so sorry or they can’t imagine what it must feel like, or that it could always be worse, or you’ll feel better eventually, or any bits of advice that do absolutely nothing.” 

  He nodded, automatically, almost involuntarily. “Kanan also said....” He cut himself off. “So, you too. What was... no, it doesn’t matter.”

  That was a relief. She would talk about what had happened with her, if he asked and she needed to, but she really would rather not. Those memories would always be painful; even though they no longer bled on contact, they were still incredibly sensitive. And besides, the only similarities in their circumstances were that they hurt, and their bodies had betrayed them. 

  “This is something I wish I’d heard, earlier.” She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “When there’s something bad like this, it’s only human to get mad at the galaxy for it. It isn’t right. It’s _not_ fair, it shouldn’t have happened. It’s okay to feel angry, and it’s completely natural to get mad at the people who only make it worse. Doesn’t matter if they weren’t trying to, it still hurts. It’s okay to want to grind someone’s face into the dirt when they say something they really should have known was a bad idea, if they took half a second to actually _think_. They’re just so _stupid_ at times, and sometimes dwelling on that fantasy was the only thing that kept me going through a shift without actually attacking anyone. Your anger isn’t wrong, it’s a part of you, and don’t let anyone make you feel guilty about it.”

  “It’s not....” He shook his head. “It’s a Jedi thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

  She felt a flash of her own anger at those words – she wasn’t stupid, how could he say that she wouldn’t understand – but pushed it back. She _didn’t_ know “Jedi stuff”, and he could have picked a better way to say it, but he almost certainly wasn’t in the best mental place. And going by the way his expression had shifted, there were other unpleasant things involved. Life didn’t give you a break just because of problems in one area, after all. 

  She’d controlled herself in the face of far worse things than somebody saying something dumb while in pain. He at least didn’t mean anything by it, and simply had wanted to drop the subject. 

  She could do that. She had more to say than just that subject, after all. 

  “This may be one of the most awkward questions, but... how do you want people to treat you?”

  “Normally,” he breathed, like the word slipped out of him as natural as his exhale, and the remembered sensation almost broke her heart.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but there is no such thing any more. Even if they don’t know, and they act exactly the same with you as they did before, you’re not the same as you were, and you’ll carry that with you.” That emptiness that was yet so heavy....

  “But I _am_ the same!” he retorted, and she didn’t know who he was trying to convince. “Nothing’s changed with me. The only difference is that people know about it now. I never should have....”

  She was losing him. If she wasn’t careful, he’d reject everything she said, thinking of her as just another person who thought they knew what was best. 

  “So, uh… how about that med droid? Still the worst bedside manner in this part of the galaxy?”

  His face twisted in remembered disgust, or maybe annoyance. “'It’s so fascinating’,” he mimicked. “A rabid loth-cat could probably program something nicer than Noisi!”

  “Oh, you call them 'Noisi’? I’ve been using 'En-zero-one’, but yours is shorter. Have you been bugged about getting an, uh....” 

  She sighed. “Where I come from, before all this,” and she waved a hand, “whenever we needed a safe and easy conversation topic, we’d just ask about the local sports team, or if we were really desperate, the weather. Can’t do that here though, there’s nothing much except the dokma _aagh_!”

  As she had shifted her weight, her foot came down on a hard round surface that hadn’t been there before. “Sorry!” she immediately said. “Dokma. They’ve been getting everywhere, and I’d swear they were specifically trying to trip people up.”

  He grinned at that, but it abruptly faded, like he had been reminded of something. “Yeah,” he quietly said. “They have been.”

  There had been something about that with him, a bad experience – probably recently – related to “tripping over dokma”. And then she realized, and felt sick to her stomach. It was hard enough to avoid the creatures when she could see perfectly. He had almost definitely stepped on one that he hadn’t been able to see. 

  “Sorry,” she said. 

  “It’s okay.”

  They both knew that it wasn’t okay, but also that nothing could really be done about that, and asking would just make it worse. 

  She pretended nothing had ever happened. It was what she would have wanted. 

  He was getting uncomfortable, and she didn’t want to lecture him. “L-listen, if you never want me to talk to you again, just say so, and I’ll leave you alone for as long as we’re both alive. Unless we’re assigned to work together for something,” she added, “that would be awkward.”

  “No, it’s... okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Well then.”

  She looked off into the distance, in the pointless hope that a solution to everything would present itself on the horizon. The sky looked the same as it always did. The sky didn’t care about them. 

  “I’ve said pretty much everything I wanted to say here,” she said. “If you ever want to talk about stuff, or talk about anything _but_ stuff, I’m here. And I still have some pretty extensive repair work to do, so I’ll be guaranteed around for a while.”

  “I’ll be around too,” he muttered. It wasn’t intended for her to hear, so she acted like she hadn’t. 

  “You can tell me what a loth-cat is, and I can tell you about sports on my homeworld.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She hadn’t expected anything more than that. She wouldn’t have _done_ anything more than that. Still, hopefully even the offer would do some good. 

  “And if anyone’s giving you problems....”

  “What, are you going to offer to fight them too? I can take care of myself, you know,” he bitterly said. 

  She blinked. “Well, I was going to say that you can rant and yell about it to me, but if you choose to fight them, I’ll cover for you.” 

  That got something that was almost a smile. A real smile. 

  “Well then,” she said. “It was nice talking to you.”

  “Yeah. Bye.”

  As she turned to leave, he acted like she was already gone. But that was okay. She had done what she needed to; everything else was up to him now.


End file.
